Conspiracy (12 page)

Dean saw the man's body heave right before he fired point-blank into the bastard's head.

 

“
ARE YOU AWAKE
?”

Dean opened his right eye warily. The man sitting next to him on the plane smiled awkwardly. A stewardess stood behind him.

“Are you awake?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” said Dean, straightening.

“We're about to serve breakfast.”

“Sure.”

He rubbed his eyes, then accepted a cup of coffee. The stewardess passed him a plate of French toast.

“I find it impossible to sleep on a plane,” said the man next to him. “Even in first class.”

“I usually don't sleep that well myself,” said Dean. He cut up the wedges of bread, wondering when he had fallen asleep. He drained his cup of coffee and asked for another, trying to purge his memory of the look on Longbow's face.

 

TOMMY KARR SAW
Dean as soon as he came out of the customs area on the first floor of Narita Airport in Tokyo. Karr watched the crowd, making sure Dean wasn't being trailed by anyone. Satisfied, Karr circled around outside and found Dean waiting at the taxi stand.

“You're on the wrong line,” Karr told Dean.

“Do I know you?”

“I hope so.” Karr winked at him, then nodded with his head, leading Dean back into the terminal.

“I thought we were staying over,” said Dean.

“We are. There's a courtesy van from the hotel.”

“Wouldn't we rather take the cab?”

“And blow our expense account?”

Karr led Dean around to the minivan, which he had used earlier to get here. The driver hopped from the cab as soon as he saw them coming, greeting Karr with a loud “hello” and taking Dean's bag.

“Loves country music,” said Karr, climbing in through the sliding door. “How'd the sales go?”

“Not bad,” said Dean, not missing a beat.

“Make quota?”

“Just barely.”

Karr kept up the sales banter all the way to the hotel. Dean, though he played along, seemed even more somber than usual.

“Somber” wasn't the right word, exactly. “Contemplative,” maybe. Or just “taciturn.” Guys who didn't talk much always seemed like they were thinking about something. Karr
wasn't sure whether that was true or not. Dean always denied he was thinking about anything, so how would you know?

Dean got a room two floors above Tommy's. They scanned it for bugs, then turned on a white-noise generator so they could talk.

“So how was your flight?” Karr asked Dean.

“Long.”

“Where are we going?”

“They didn't tell you?”

“Telach said you'd brief me.”

“Vietnam.”

“What are we going to do, get a do-over on the war?”

Dean frowned. He wasn't much for Karr's jokes, which struck Karr as more fun than if he had been.

“Let's go get something to eat,” Karr told him. “And worry about it later.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“There's this sushi place downstairs that looks really good.”

“I'm not eating anything that hasn't been cooked,” said Dean.

“Where's your sense of adventure?”

 

THEY ENDED UP
in a restaurant several blocks away, circling around and splitting up at one point to make sure they weren't being followed. Dean knew the precautions were overkill—no one had any reason to be following them at this point—but he didn't object when Karr suggested them. He let Tommy be Tommy, cracking sardonic jokes in the restaurant and making funny faces at the emotionless waitstaff, trying to get them to laugh. He was in many ways just a big kid—a very, very big kid—and Dean knew that Karr had a tendency to deal with stress by pretending to be the class clown. He was one of those guys who would probably be telling jokes in the helicopter as it touched down in a hot LZ.

Better than puking, Dean thought.

Personally, he found it better to be quiet.

Maybe the mission was a “do-over” in a sense. Phuc Dinh—how could he have missed him?

He hadn't. Phuc Dinh was definitely dead. And it had definitely been him—the photo was positively ID'd when Dean got back to camp. The scar cinched it.

Better to be quiet before battle, Dean thought. Quiet your mind as well as your mouth—he tried to push the memory of Longbow and Phuc Dinh away, focusing on the here and now of the Tokyo restaurant.

“What do you think this is?” Karr asked, holding up a piece of sashimi.

“Fish.”

“Sure, but what kind? Sea urgent, you think?”

“Urchin.”

Karr winked, then swallowed the food whole. “Definitely urgent.”

Dean couldn't help himself; he cracked a smile and raised his hand to signal the waiter for another beer.

“How was your vay-kay?” Karr asked.

“If you mean vacation, it was fine.”

“Bag any mooses?”

“I was hunting mountain lions.”

“Get any?”

“One. Almost bit off my head before I brought it down.”

Karr thought it was a joke and smiled. “Why do you like hunting, Charlie? What's the attraction?”

The waiter came over with Dean's Sapporo. He took a sip, and then answered Karr's question by asking if he had ever gone hunting himself.

“Only for girls,” said Karr. Then he laughed so loud everyone around them turned to see what was so funny.

 

AMANDA LOOKED AT
the clock on her stove. She was supposed to meet with a member of the Agency's human-resources staff to discuss her “official status” in an hour.

Or was it a member of Internal Investigations? Amanda couldn't remember; she'd been too far gone when she took the phone call, and in fact could barely read her handwritten note showing the person's office number.

It didn't matter. Amanda wasn't going to keep the appointment.

Not because she was drunk. She was sober, as her pounding head and dry mouth reminded her.

Amanda had decided to leave town, though where she was going she wasn't sure. There was no reason to hang around. The Service would surely fire her. It wasn't fair, but that was the way it was going to be. She could tell from the way Frey had looked at her the other afternoon; he wanted her gone. And he would get what he wanted.

She didn't care. She didn't care about anything.

She cared about Jerry Forester, but he was gone. She was mad at him and sad for him, devastated and angry at the same time.

How could he do this to her? And to his boys. To his older son.

She had more questions for Jerry—many—but they would never be answered. The only way to deal with them was to get far away from them. If she didn't, the questions would consume her.

As would the booze.

The smell of Lysol and vomit stung her nose in the bathroom. She'd spent nearly two hours cleaning the place, and still the scent of half-digested gin clung to the ceramic tile. She pushed at the window, though it was already open as far as it would go.

The doorbell rang. Her first thought was that it was someone from the Service, coming for her because she'd missed her appointment. But that was impossible—she hadn't missed it yet. And they wouldn't bother to fetch her.

Amanda went to the front door and peered through the tiny peephole. A short Asian woman and a much older man stood in the foyer. The woman reached to the bell again.

“What is it?” said Amanda.

“Ms. Rauci?”

Amanda hesitated. If they knew her name they weren't Mormons or someone else she could easily send away.

“We're with the federal marshals' service, Ms. Rauci,” said the woman. She held up a government identification card. “We need to talk to you.”

Marshals?

“Why?”

“It's about Gerald Forester,” said the woman.

Well, of course it was. Amanda turned the dead bolt but left the chain on the door, opening it a crack.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“This isn't a good place to talk,” said the woman.

“I'm due at work in an hour.”

“This shouldn't take long.”

The woman's face was hard; Amanda realized she wasn't going to be put off.

“It would be more comfortable for all of us inside,” said the man.

Even if Amanda hadn't known and practiced most of the games a two-person investigation team would play, she would have pegged the older man as the good guy a mile away. He seemed to have cultivated a grandfatherly look to help him with his interviews.

She slid off the chain and took a step back.

“I'm Lia DeFrancesca. This is Hernes Jackson.”

“Hi.” Amanda remained in the hall.

“Maybe if we sat in the living room or kitchen?” suggested Jackson.

Amanda led them to the kitchen.

“You have a bag packed,” said Lia. “Coming or going?”

“Coming,” lied Amanda. She felt her lip quiver, and longed for a drink. “Thirsty? I'll make some coffee.”

“No thank you,” said Lia. Jackson shook his head.

The two officers pulled out chairs but didn't sit down. Neither did Amanda.

“We were interested in knowing if Agent Forester ever discussed cases with you,” said Lia.

“That would be against the rules.”

“True,” said Jackson. “But sometimes things are said anyway. It's not going to be held against him, I assure you.”

“He's dead. How can you hold anything against him?” said Amanda.

“Did he?”

Amanda shook her head. “Jerry wasn't like that. He . . .”

The tears began flowing. She couldn't help it. She ran to the bathroom and buried her face in a towel.

 

LIA GLANCED AT
Jackson. She had spent the entire ride to Amanda Rauci's house exhorting herself to keep an open mind. But seeing Amanda convinced Lia once again that there was no way this was suicide. Amanda wasn't beautiful; she was a bit on the plump side, and though she was only in her early thirties her face was already showing the signs of age. But still, it was impossible for Lia to believe that someone would walk out on both his kids and a girlfriend, especially one who obviously loved him.

“Maybe you should see if she's all right,” Jackson suggested.

“Yeah.”

Lia went down the hall. The apartment smelled as if it were a hospital.

“Ms. Rauci? Amanda?”

“What?”

The sharp bite of her voice, stronger than Lia had expected, took her by surprise. “Hey, look, I know this sucks,” she told Amanda.

“Do you? Do you really know how it feels?”

The truth was, Lia didn't, not really, not firsthand. She'd been very lucky—Charlie Dean had come close to being killed on a mission but always survived.

“There were a couple of things about this that don't make sense,” said Lia. “I don't think it happened exactly the way everyone says it did. So, maybe, we can figure it out?”

The door opened abruptly. Amanda, red faced, stared at her.

“Why are you interested?” said Amanda. “Who are you really with? I know you're not federal marshals.”

“I told you, we're working with the marshals' office, helping out.”

“Who are you really?”

Lia could be harder than anyone, and yet she felt real sympathy for the woman. Rubens hadn't told her and Jackson to lie, exactly, and Lia decided that Amanda was more likely to cooperate if she told the truth.

Even if it was in a roundabout way.

“We're with the NSA, on loan to the marshals service, which is helping with the investigation,” she said. “We're trying to track down an e-mail your husband—your boyfriend—received. It may indicate that an assassination plot had an overseas origin. That's why we're here. That's what we're interested in.”

Either the explanation or Lia's unconscious mistake about the nature of the relationship—calling Forester Amanda's husband—softened her.

“Let's go back into the kitchen,” she told Lia. “Or the living room. That's better.”

Lia took Amanda's elbow, clutching it gently as they walked down the hall. She suddenly felt like the host, rather than the uninvited guest.

“Do you want something?” Lia asked. “Coffee? Or something stronger?”

“Tea,” said Amanda. “There's a kettle. Just tea.”

 

TALKING ABOUT HIM
was a catharsis. The words rushed from Amanda's mouth, thoughts and emotions flowing that she had never even known she'd had. The two NSA agents, the hard Asian woman and the kindly grandfather, sat and listened. Amanda still wasn't entirely sure why they were here, what they were really after—what Lia had told her made some sense but lacked enough real details to convince her. But once she had started to talk about Jerry, it didn't matter.

Finally, the man, Jackson, interrupted her. “Did he say why he was investigating in Connecticut?”

“It wasn't Connecticut. That was where we—where he—could get a hotel. The investigation was over in New York, a few miles away. We—I went up there to meet him. We were going to meet. But—”

The tears overwhelmed her for a moment. She thought of the nightgown she'd worn. She'd already thrown it out.

“He decided to stay in another hotel. I don't know why. I thought he was coming to the hotel I was at. He called me and then, well, he said he would be there and didn't come. I thought he stood me up. Well, I guess he did.”

She bent over, sobbing until there was nothing left.

If they asked now whether she'd seen him dead, if they'd even hinted that they knew there was more to the story, she would tell them. She couldn't hold back. She felt like a balloon that had been popped and left exhausted on the floor.

But they didn't know to ask.

“The e-mail we were interested in,” said Lia, “came from Vietnam. Does that ring any bells?”